While walking home from Harvard Square this evening we came upon a
cat that had been hit by a car. It was lying still in the middle of
Putnam Ave, and two guys who had gotten there a little before us were
trying to figure out what to do. We decided to move a traffic barrel
that had been on a nearby sidewalk in front of the cat to prevent it
from being run over again. While we were doing this, the cat began
moving. At first it gave some soft meows, but as it woke from unconsciousness it began to cry. The noise was almost human, very evocative, and truly horrific.
We left the scene soon after the people who believed they had hit
the cat returned. I kept thinking about that cry. Why should the cat
cry? It made no sense. In the
wild, a greviously injured animal crying would simply signal to the
world where the next fresh kill would be. Why should an animal cry at
all?
Kittens cry to seek comfort from their mother. Was that all this cat
wanted? In some instinctive way was the cat simply calling for its mother?
After all, on the brink of death, an animal’s behavior would hardly
affect its species’ evolution — the individual animal is already
weeded from the gene pool. So perhaps the cat was crying for comfort
because there was no hope for survival, anyway.
When we pray to God, are we also not invoking the memory of our parents’ comfort?
